News

Scientia PhD scholarship at UNSWJune 2019

We have an exciting opportunity for a fully funded PhD scholarship with Prof. Steven Sherwood,
Prof. Tim Duty and myself at the interface between climate, physics and maths.
Deadline 21 July 2019. For more details, click the banner!

AOFD conference, Portland, Maine, USAJune 2019

After a four-year absence I am very excited to come back to the
Conference on Atmospheric and Oceanic Fluid Dynamics
of the American Meteorological Society. It will be great to catch up with that community and hopefully have some of those great interactions this conference is so famous for.

CLIM2001 / PHYS2801 class starting, UNSW SydneyFebruary 2019

After months of preparation, my class on Fundamentals of Atmospheric Science will finally start.
I'll be convenor/lecturer/course responsible for this introductory course into the wonders of atmospheric science including
radiative transfer, dynamics, thermodynamics, clouds and numerical modelling. Looking forward to some good interaction with the students!

We're finally going to the place we are all so obsessed with - Darwin, NT. Why are we obsessed with this place?
We're using the radar data all the time, and running high-resolution models to study convection in and around Darwin.

Me in particular, as I will be giving a talk about the performance of the UK Unified Model and the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model.
Of course, performance as in "compared to the Darwin radar".
So it's about time we're visiting. Will be hot and humid though...

SPARC General Assembly Kyoto, JapanOctober 2018

Excited to go to the SPARC GA - if it's only half as good as the last in New Zealand, it'll be epic.
My poster will be about the work with Thomas Reichler on Sudden Stratospheric Warmings.
It can be previewed here.

The ARC Centre of Excellence for Climate System Science is coming to an end
but we are doing down under full throttle with the last Convection Group Workshop at the University of Melbourne, were I will be one of the
few researchers outside the Bureau of Meteorology to present results from the Unified Model explicit convection model.

First full lectures to teachMay 2018

Just arrived, and already teaching a full module of the UNSW Fundamentals of Atmospheric Science class. Gettin' right in there!

The idealised climate model framework Isca is now fully launched with the final publication of our paper, freely available here. I have also written a short, more philosophical article about the benefits of open source, version control, and idealised climate models in The Conversation here. Feel free to share and even comment if you like.

Sudden Warming Paper published onlineFebruary 2018

Our new paper about the relative roles of Rossby waves and nonconservative processes has been published online in JAS. You can read it here.

MiMA talk at UMAP/Pan-GASS conferenceFebruary 2018

I will finally be able to present my own climate model MiMA at a conference in person. So far, Ed Gerber has done an amazing job at representing our work and MiMA, and other MiMA users presented as well, but I couldn't make it to the relevant conferences yet. This is going to change at the end of the month, were I will be giving a talk at the Understanding and Modelling Atmospheric Processes (UMAP) meeting, which is also known as the second Pan-GASS meeting.

I am excited to have been invited to give a presentation about the uses of 3D visualisation in research. I'll give the talk to the plenary during the annual workshop of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Climate System Science in Canberra, October 29 - November 1.

New 360-degree video of Irma, José and KatiaOctober 2017

My newest scientific visualisation video uses YouTube's 360 degree capabilities, and brings the viewer around, above, and even into three of the September 2015 Hurricanes. It's very high resolution, so be sure to be on WiFi, and don't forget to move around with your mouse or phone/tablet! See it here. Tip: if it's too fast, you can hit "pause" and then have a 360-degree look around.

New live 3D weather domains October 2017

After
the devastating September Hurricanes in the
Caribbean (see post below), I have accelerated a project I had
in mind for some time now: Adding Ocean basin
domains to my live weather
regions. These domains are the Tropical Atlantic
and the North Western Tropical Pacific. As
Northern Hemisphere Hurricane season slowly
comes to an end, I will probably switch to
their Southern Hemisphere counterparts in the
near future.

I have now uploaded my first virtual reality rendering of my scientific model output. It works in the browser by navigating with the mouse, or with Google Cardboard on any mobile phone. Have a look here. A small tip: If you are using an iPhone, go to the sharing icon, hit "Add to Home Screen", and then open it as a normal App - that way, the annoying address bar will disappear.

My talk is entitled "Stratosphere vs Troposphere: A Dance of Scales", and will take place on 26 July. If you happen to be around, come, see the talk, have a coffee, and be merry.

MiMA paper published online June 2017

I am happy to announce that our paper Untangling the annual cycle of the tropical tropopause layer with an idealized moist model has been published online on the Journal of Climate website at DOI 10.1175/JCLI-D-17-0127.1.

The paper introduces the Model of an idealized Moist Atmosphere (MiMA), which closes the gap between idealized dry or gray radiation schemes and full-blown General Circulation Models by including full radiative transfer, but neglecting clouds, chemistry, and ocean circulation. It also explores the annual cycle of temperature in the upper tropical troposphere/lower stratosphere, and shows how midlatitude baroclinicity plays an important role in setting up the observed structure.

Visiting Exeter UK June 2017

As part of our efforts to improve the performance of convection permitting simulations with the UK MetOffice's Unified Model, I will be taking part at the 2nd Convective Scale Modelling Workshop 12-14 June. I will also visit Geoff Vallis' climate dynamics research group at Exeter University, and discuss some projects related to global climate dynamics. I will also try and pick up a brand new copy of the 2nd edition of "Atmospheric and Oceanic Fluid Dynamics", which contains a few of my scientific visualisations.

Talk at Bureau of Meteorology March 2017

The Australian Bureau of Meteorology asked me to present my most recent results on stratosphere-troposphere coupling and possible applications to seasonal forecasting. I've spent a very interesting day at the Bureau, thanks to everyone for some exciting discussions!

I've written a small piece about the Dos and Don'ts in scientific visualisation, with the example of my newest addition to my website, Weather Alive. If you'd like to know more about how such things can be done, go have a read.

I am happy to visit Prof. Geoff Vallis in Exeter, UK, for a week before going off to new adventures.
The group in Exeter has become an important user of my climate models, so it is great to catch up on
new ideas and applications of these models, and also further developing projects.

Visualizations at the Supercomputing Conference SC15 in Austin, TXOctober 2015

I am thrilled that Kitware,the developer of the visualization software ParaView,
will feature no less than three of my movies and two pictures at their booth at SC15 in Austin, TX, November 15-20 2015.
Needless to say, all of the five visualizations are done with pv_atmos, my personal code package.

Being a Tiger in the Big AppleSeptember 2015

After a year of absence, I am a Princeton Research Scholar again, but this time with my office in the middle of Greenwich Village, Manhattan.
I'll be working with Geoff Vallis at Exeter, but also Ed Gerber at NYU on atmospheric dynamics, seasonal forecasting, and climate change.

One of my visualizations, which I have on my website here, has been chosen as Imaggeo on Mondays featured photo. This blog belongs to the European Geosciences Union. It's an honor to provide a numerical rendering of the stratosphere to a blog that is about beautiful photography in geosciences!

I'm looking forward to my third meeting, with my fifth oral and two first poster presentations this year.
I have the great honor to give the last talk before the banquet on Wednesday, and promise to do something special for the occasion...
So, hope to see lots of familiar faces at the conference, and why not stop by at my posters on Tuesday and Thursday, and come and hear (and see) my talk on Wednesday.
Oh, and to round off the week, I'll also be chairing the first morning session on Friday. See you there!

Just like for SPARC 2014, I have created a one minute trailer for my appearance at the American Meteorological Society Annual Meeting 2015 in Phoenix, Arizona. One of my three talks will be about my visualization package pv_atmos, and I compiled some of my best visualizations into a movie. You can find it on my visualization page or directly on my YouTube channel. Isn't science beautiful? See you in Phoenix!

Visiting the University of Exeter, UKDecember 2014

I am visiting the University of Exeter, UK, during the first week of December. Beautiful city, beautiful people, beautiful science (and of course, beautiful drinks too). We'll be working on some exciting new projects - stay tuned!

Talk at ETH Zurich November 2014

Thanks to everyone at ETH who came to my talk, and also my visualization workshop. I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did. Happy visualizing!

Paper in JGR published November 2014

Our newest paper has been published in Journal of Geophysical Research Atmospheres (JGR Atmospheres).
The article describes a realistic way of including stratospheric dynamics in a simple dry GCM with Newtonian damping. More importantly, it
discusses the effects of various stratospheric setups in such models on the frequency of Stratospheric Sudden Warmings (SSWs), which are an
important feature of stratosphere-troposphere interaction. You can access it here.

Version 2.0 introduces new subpackage names pv_atmos.basic and pv_atmos.grids, some re-arrangement between the packages, and new functions.
I have made this major update because I think it makes more sense, and it being available to anyone on pypi, I think these changes make a lot of sense.
Try it out today! And remember to read and cite my publication about pv_atmos.

Viz workshop having an effect! September 2014

One of the students from my ParaView workshop earlier this year in Melbourne, Australia, has created an amazing movie showing the ozone hole.
The movie is not only beautiful (including the music), but it shows such important science in such a nice way!
Good job Kane Stone, more of this! The movie can be watched on vimeo, and some more
description can be found here.

Good bye Princeton, Welcome NYU! September 2014

After over three years being a Princeton Tiger, I have arrived in Manhattan to start my new position at Courant Institute, New York University.
Thank you very much Princeton and all the people at AOS/GFDL for memorable years full of enjoyable encounters and good science!

New ocean visualization August 2014

My movies section has just been updated to include my newest creation, this time ocean science related.
The movie shows anthropogenic (human-made) CO2 concentrations in the worlds' oceans, dives into the deep of the Atlantic, and flies over the top of Mauna Loa to go and take a look at Antarctica.

Art of Science 2014 released July 2014

The pictures and videos of this year's Art of Science competition are online.
My contribution is listed in the videos section, and can be watched there,
in the 3D part of my movies section, or following the official Princeton Youtube channel here.

Princeton has also created a compilation of all winner movies 2014, which can be seen here.

Feature story on Princeton University's Home page June 2014

Today my visualizations make up the cover of Princeton University's website. Also included some of my pictures and
movies. Go to the article here.

My open source paper describing the
the visualization routines I have developed for my 3D renderings has been published.
It's open access, and includes detailed descriptions of how to make it work, where to get the code, and how to run the example files.
Have a look.

Finalist for Princeton's Art of Science - again! April 2014

After winning
last year's Art of Science competition, I will be among
the finalists this year as well. This time, instead of a
picture, I submitted a video. The winners will be announced at
the opening ceremony on May 8th.

Fusion paper published January 2014

Our paper about self-consistent simulations of radio frequency heating of fusion
plasmas in very general geometries has been published in Fusion
Science and Technology. You can read it here.

SPARC General Assembly 2014 January 2014

I am excited to finally make it to the Southern Hemisphere for the
SPARC General Assembly
in Queenstown, New Zealand. You can find a 44-second teaser for my poster in the
media section.

JAS paper published November 2013

Our paper about the maintenance of the stratospheric structure in an idealized GCM
has been published in Journal of the
Atmospheric Sciences. It discusses how to improve the Newtonian cooling term in
simple GCMs and investigates the origin of the seasonal cycle in temperature in the
tropical tropopause layer. You can find it here.

Visualization appears in Popular Science Magazine
October 2013

In the October issue of Popular
Science, you can find my little visual work on page 30. This comes out of Princeton's Art of Science competition that
I won (see earlier news). In this particular article, I am who they refer to as "a
scientist from Princeton University"...

FIRST PRIZE in Art of Science contest May 2013

My contribution has received the award of best picture, and
the prize was presented by Pablo Debenedetti, Dean of Research. My
thanks to the distinguished panel of judges: Katherine Bussard, Peter
C. Bunnell curator of the Princeton Art Museum; David Dobkin,
Dean of the Faculty; Emmet Gowin, Professor of Visual Arts,
Emeritus; Paul Muldoon, Howard G.B. Clark '21 University
Professor in the Humanities; and Shirley M. Tilghman,
President. Visit the official Art of Science gallery.

New paper out May 2013

My latest co-authored paper about sawtooth control in ITER
has been published online. It compares results from measurements and
various codes, including my code package SCENIC. Check it out.

American Institute of Physics
Editor's Choice 2012May 2013

One of my co-authored articles made it into the Best
Articles of the Year 2012 selection of Physics of Plasmas. The paper highlights the importance
of finite orbit widths in radio frequency heating scenarios. More
information here.

New SNSF fellowship December
2012

The Swiss National Science Foundation just decided to award
me with their Advanced Researcher's fellowship. Ranked highest
of six levels, predicate "outstanding". Cheers to that!